Mystery of the Radioactive Red Call Box
by madi.bee3
Summary: After being shoved out the door by an annoyed Mrs. Hudson for shooting her walls yet again, Sherlock stumbles upon a recently-deceased musical thespian in a call box. Takes place during and after John and Mary's honeymoon.


**Disclaimer!: I DO NOT own Sherlock. Heh. Too bad for me. :'(**

This is my very first Sherlock fanfic, let me know what I can fix and do better... That would be great. I am up to any criticisms. :)

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><p>"Bored." A boisterous man's voice echoed in the dingy flat. He looked around from his corpse position on the couch, slightly disoriented -though he'd never admit to THAT- from exiting his mind palace after spending nearly six hours restocking and deleting data.<p>

_John. _He thought. _Where is John? _But then he remembered. The "M" word. Marriage. He had come back from his apparent death only to find that his best and only friend had moved passed him and gotten on with life.

He was _happy_ for John, if using proper "human" vernacular. Logically speaking, he knew happiness to be nothing other than a slight excess of serotonin and dopamine in the brain, a chemical reaction to a thought that could be summarized as nothing but an electrical impulse, as the rest of the human experience and the very fabric of reality as is known to the human mind- His train of thought cut off, and he reaffirmed his problem at hand.

"Bored." He voiced again, slightly quieter.

He couldn't even BOTHER John, which he would be inclined to do if John weren't out of the country with Mary for their "honeymoon."

"Wedding traditions." He scoffed. "Ridiculous."

He swung his legs off of the couch and bolted upright. Ignoring the symptoms of orthostatic hypotension, he made his way to the fireplace mantel and picked up his 'friend' skull. After staring into the skull's empty sockets for _far _too long to be considered "normal" -not that he minded, the very definition of normal was subjective at best- he tossed it aside.

"Can't even have a conversation with a bloody skull." He growled. John had grown to be far too useful…

In a desperate attempt to alleviate even a small portion of his mental stagnancy, he fired rounds at the smiley face painted on the opposite side of the room.

"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson called from the doorway. "You don't pay enough rent to be shootin' up my walls!"

"Be quiet, Mrs. Hudson." He said, firing another few bullets.

"Sherlock Holmes! Put the bloody gun down and go on a walk or SOMETHING! I am not having you ruining my flat!"

"A bit late for that," He said, gesturing to the spray painted happy face and peeling wallpaper, adorned with multiple bullet holes.

Mrs. Hudson gave him a single, threatening look. Sherlock rolled his eyes, donned his scarf and Belstaff, and exited the flat.

**0000000**

Rosemary Doyle stumbled along the city sidewalk, clutching her stomach and sweating bullets. She'd been sick for a few days, but with London Theatre's production of Les Miserables and her role as Eponine at stake, she never dared to voice her concern over her health. Her pain now, however, was too much to bear.

Rosemary was used to being sick. She was 5'5" and only 106 pounds, a slight improvement from her previous 97 pounds, due to her intense diet and drink rituals. She had been in and out of rehab for anorexia nervosa, but to no avail. Her line of work, musical theatre, required perfection in all areas, causing her weight obsession and desire to work herself to the bone.

Gasping in pain and ignoring the dirty looks people gave her, she opened the doors of a call box and dialed her fiancé's cell. Production or not, she refused to go back to work feeling the way she did.

As the phone rang, she cursed herself for leaving her cell on her makeup table before going on lunch break. It would have saved her the trouble of having to dig coins out of the bottom of her handbag.

Seconds ticked by, feeling like hours. Her vision blurred, causing her to nearly pass out. She was startled out of her stupor by the chuckling voice answering at the other end if the line.

"Hello?" The voice said.

"Love, it's me." Rosemary said, breathing heavily.

"Have you missed me that much in the ten minutes we've been apart?"

"No, love, I-" Her voice cut off. She clutched her stomach and head, slowly sinking to the bottom of the deep red call box. "Help," she gasped.

"Hello? Rosemary? Rose!" The muffled voice from the telephone yelled.

The door of the telephone booth opened, people scrambled at the sight of the unconscious woman.

"Hello?" A man grabbed the hanging phone.

"Who is this?" The woman's fiancé asked, startled.

"Sherlock Holmes is the name. I am afraid your fiancé hay have been murdered.

"Well that certainly may have been a first..." Sherlock said aloud after hanging up the phone. He glanced at the abandoned, clearly dead, not-so-clearly murdered body on the floor of the call box.

_LIKELY MURDER NEAR BAKER STREET._

_IF INCONVENIENT, COME ANYWAY._

**0000000**

Greg Lestrade pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes.

"You mean to tell me that you just _happened _to walk by and saw her fall over in the call box?" Donovan said.

"You are not implying, again, that I could possibly be at fault, are you? What could I possibly gain from killing a young woman involved in _musical theatre _of all simple professions?"

Sherlock kneeled down next to the frail body. She had long, perfectly curled wavy brown hair, pale blue-green eyes, and an atrocious amount of freckles sprinkled all over her body. She was clearly anorexic, or even maybe an extreme dieter. The joints on her knees and ankles were clearly swollen, and she had bruises and scrapes on her arms. She clearly had a habit of pushing her body to the limits during performances. Her fingers were manicured, and she still had a small, barely noticeable remnant of stage makeup beneath her jawline.

"Sherlock, there is no evidence of foul play."

"Shut up, Garrett. I know a murder when I see one."

"Her death is tragic, yes, but she was clearly suffering from-"

"Anorexia nervosa. It just does not add up. She may have been underweight, but she was out of any immediate danger. She died after eating a comparatively large meal whilst on a lunch date with her fiancé. She even gained two pounds in the past week. Sherlock rolled his eyes at Donovan and Lestrade's doubt filled gazes. "Although it is evident, I did get a confirming testimony from her fiancé. He was still on the line when I found her."

"Sherlock…"

"Definitely murder."

Lestrade sighed and groaned internally. "I'll tell you what, Sherlock. I'll have Molly take care of it and look for signs of poisoning, but if she finds nothing the official cause of death will be anorexia."

**0000000**

Sherlock gave one fake smile and walked away from the call box, intent on bothering Molly for a few fingers before the body arrived.

"Three index fingers and a thumb." Were the first words out of Sherlock's mouth. No hello, please, or thank-you. Of course, Molly Hooper expected nothing different. She just smiled slightly and proceeded to collect his 'order.'

_How morbid._ She laughed to herself. _Associating human digits with orders of food… Imagine finding a finger in one's Fish and Chips… _"Here you are." She said after returning from a cooler.

"Do you have another thumb? This one is a bit too small."

"Oh, you're right! It's even smaller than mine!" She said, laughing. "I'll get you a larger one… Hold on a moment." She grabbed the inferior thumb from the bag she handed Sherlock and replaced it with another spare thumb, this time one twice the size of her own. "Will this do?"

"Yes." He nodded in the affirmative.

Molly smiled at him briefly and went back to her paperwork. After a few moments she realized he had not yet left. "Yes?" She asked.

"Just waiting for a body."

"I am done with my autopsies today. Slow day, actually. Only had two."

"Sorry. Not _a _body. _The _body. I found a young woman dying in a call box earlier today."

"Oh my God! Really?"

"There were no signs of foul play, but I know it was murder. And you're going to help me prove it."

Molly rolled her eyes. "Bored, are you Sherlock?"

"Now what would give you that idea?"

"Pass me my voice recorder, would you?" Molly asked Sherlock, who had taken to observing her every move once the corpse came in.

"Female, twenty four to twenty six years of age." Molly walked around the body. "Five foot five, and approximately 106 pounds. An irregular abundance of freckles, and a birthmark the shape of a mushroom on the base of her neck, approximately a half an inch in circumference. "

She temporarily shut off the voice recorder and carefully fingerprinted the dead woman. "It's a shame. She was very pretty." Molly said quietly under her breath.

Molly inspected the body under a magnifying glass for any signs of anything out of the ordinary. The only bruises she found were old and likely caused by everyday life. Her knees and ankles were swollen, but that is common for individuals who work on their feet. "No marks or fibers out of the ordinary." She said into her voice recorder.

After the X-rays were processed, Molly put them up against the light. "No signs of broken bones, teeth are perfect." She inspected the corpse's genital area. "No signs of rape, either."

A few photographs later, Molly took a blood sample and gave it to Sherlock to take care of. "You can test this adequately enough, I believe. If it was a murder as you believe, it most likely would be poisoning."

"I'm not ignorant of the fact, Molly."

A large incision was made from each shoulder across the chest to the brisket and down to the belly button. Spreading open the skin, Molly peered into the tiny woman's body. "No broken ribs." She said into the tape recorder. Molly promptly split open the body's ribs. "No abnormalities in the lungs or heart." She said after examining them. A second blood sample was taken from the heart, which she handed to Sherlock to analyze.

Molly examined, weighed, and took samples of each individual organ in the chest cavity. Little to no abnormalities were present. Moving to the lower area of the body, she stopped at the kidneys. "That's odd…" She remarked. The corpse's kidneys appeared to have shrunk slightly, and were aggravated. She took a flesh sample and walked it over to Sherlock. "Test this for me. The kidneys look off." Sherlock nodded briefly and she continued through her work, noting that there was a lot of fluid loss, and the liver seemed to have nearly doubled in size. She took note of the fact and removed a tissue sample to be tested by Sherlock. She extracted a urine sample from the bladder with a syringe, then proceeded to examine the corpse's eyes for signs of petechial rash. The whites of her eyes were slightly red, but there were no tiny broken blood vessels. She obviously was not strangled. there was a slight bruise on the right side of the corpse's head, presumably from when she hit a corner of the call box when she fell, but it was not a strong enough blow to kill. Molly sawed open the skull and removed the brain. She took flesh samples and weighed it, but there were no obvious abnormalities.

Sitting down at her desk and sinking her head into her hands, she sighed. This was going to be a tough one. "And now we wait for the test samples."

"And now we wait." Sherlock replied from behind a microscope.

Molly left the room and returned with two cups of coffee. She sat one next to Sherlock and took hers to her desk to complete her report of Rosemary Doyle's death as far as she could without the samples and began filling out extra paperwork.

_I cannot, for the life of me, figure out the cause of death. She wasn't starving, as Lestrade and Donovan suspected. _ She thought. _Something good better come back on those samples. _"I don't disagree with you, Sherlock, it's just that if anything, it looks as if she died from radiation sickness." Molly said after a few moments.

"She was definitely poisoned. With what, is the proper question."

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><p><strong>AN: **That's all for now! Please review! :D


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